


the ghost of you

by ndnickerson



Series: Rain on a Tin Roof [1]
Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Pregnancy, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:16:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson's reaction to Nancy's unexpected pregnancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ghost of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glasheen25 (children_of_lir)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/children_of_lir/gifts).



Nancy sat down at the top of the steps once Hannah had gone to bed, at the landing with her feet on the next step, waiting. She had her phone beside her but she wasn't touching it.

In the morning, she knew, she would feel better. She'd done almost everything. Just this one last thing.

She reached up for the rail and pulled herself to her feet. She felt fragile, and scared, and if she lost her nerve, if she counted all the steps all the way down to the bottom and still felt afraid, she could just go back upstairs. This had already been one of the worst days of her life.

The door to her father's study was open, enough to cast a wide swath of soft light on the hardwood. He was listening to a game, on the big old-fashioned radio that stood in the corner. She peeked through without touching the door, like she used to do when she was still a child, when he was still a district attorney.

Carson took a long moment to look up at her, but when he did, the warm smile that crossed his face was genuine. "Hi Nan."

She returned his smile, weakly, and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind her. His brow furrowed, just a little, and he sat back in his worn, comfortable chair. When he was away on cases, or trips, or conventions, and she was stuck on something that she would have talked over with him, often she came and curled up in that chair, put his spare pair of glasses up on her head, and tried to channel him.

She wished she could do it now. She wasn't quite sure what he was going to say. Maybe he wouldn't say anything at all.

"What's on your mind?"

The chair in front of her father's desk was old too, creaking, reupholstered by Hannah as an annual project. This year it was in green corduroy. Nancy sank into it, pulling her knees up, her socked feet tucked down between the cushion and the arm.

"I..."

Nancy trailed off, tracing her fingertip over the edge of the arm. She could feel her father looking at her, but he didn't say anything, he just waited.

She'd never felt this far away from him. They'd always been able to talk, about almost everything. Even their sex talk hadn't been the awkward fiasco Bess and George had groaned over, at that age.

"I have a plan."

He leaned forward and put his forearms on the desk. He still looked good-natured, but her reticence was alarming him.

"I just want you to know that before I tell you this. I'm not... I guess I'm not coming here asking for advice. I just think you need to know now."

Nancy chuckled and shook her head. "That came out wrong."

"Just tell me," Carson said gently.

Nancy took a long breath and let it out. "I'm pregnant."

Carson's eyes opened wide. "Oh," he said, almost just to himself. "Oh. So... so you and Ned..."

Nancy brought her hands up to her face and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. "No," she said, her voice choked. "No, not that. I haven't seen Ned in... in a while. It's Frank, actually."

"You're sure?"

He said it quietly and Nancy's head tilted up so she could meet his gaze, quickly, almost shocked. She made a soft noise, but she studied her father's face, and even though it was set, he wasn't closing off, he wasn't condemning her.

"I'm sure."

"You two have been seeing each other?"

Nancy closed her eyes. She'd never lied to him, not here. "Not really," she said, very softly. "Not like that. Things just got out of hand."

"Things just got out of hand?"

Nancy opened her eyes. "I never meant for things to get this serious between us."

"How long has this been going on?"

"It hasn't been 'going on,' Dad," Nancy said, rubbing her eyes. She didn't want to start crying in front of him. She was pretty sure that soon, she wasn't going to have a choice. "It was once."

"Once?" Carson stood up, his shadow looming for a moment before he moved over to the corner and snapped the radio off. He crossed his arms. "So you and Frank had sex, once... a month ago?"

"Two months ago," Nancy admitted. "You look skeptical."

"I just find it hard to believe that after one time, you'd be pregnant. Nan, you know... you can tell me if you two had been seeing each other for a while, that things had developed..."

Nancy just stared at him, speechless, until he went back to his desk, sank back down into his chair. "We didn't."

"And Ned."

Nancy ran her hand through her hair, shook her head. "Ned and I haven't."

Carson sighed. "What are you going to do?"

"I called Frank this afternoon, and he told me he's taking the next flight out. He wants to talk to me."

"How did he take it?"

"A little better than you are," Nancy said, smiling weakly, and her heart rose just a little when her father returned it.

"And how did Ned take it?"

Nancy had left her phone upstairs. Ever since her afternoon emergency meeting with Bess and George, she had been convinced that the next phone call, the next, the next, would be from Ned, and she was dreading it. He would be angry, angry beyond belief, or he would be cold and sarcastic, and she was sure she couldn't deal with either.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I haven't told him yet."

Carson's eyes widened again. He put his palms flat on the blotter, studied his fingernails for a moment, then looked back up at her.

"And how do you feel?"

"Scared," she admitted. Her throat was beginning to ache. "I'm hoping that everything will make more sense once Frank gets here, and we can talk about what we're going to do."

"What do you think he's going to suggest?" Carson shook his head. "You two are very young, Nancy. I thought you were talking about going to college, getting on track for your career..."

"And I can still do that," Nancy said, tucking her fingers behind her knees. "There's no reason I can't take classes."

Carson looked like he was going to make some response, but instead he just shook his head again. "Nan, you know that whatever you decide... you can stay here. Whatever you and Frank decide to do."

Nancy smiled again. "Thanks. I know you were in the middle of something, and I don't want to keep you up..."

"You drop this bombshell and then expect me to just go to sleep?" Carson chuckled. "I'm going to make some hot milk, I think. If you want some."

"Yeah," Nancy sighed, unfolding herself with effort. "I could go for that."

\--

Her father was asleep, Hannah was asleep, the phone was silent on her nightstand and Nancy curled up on her side in her tank top and shorts, facing the window. She rested her palm on her belly.

Maybe Frank would come with a blank check and a rental-car ride to a clinic.

Nancy turned, burying her face in the cool weight of the pillow. From everything her father had said, she knew that he would understand, if that's what Frank's visit meant. When she let herself mentally follow that path, she knew that would be the end of her relationship with Frank, and, if she was honest with Ned, the end of her relationship with him as well. Even though she had talked about deceiving Ned about the child, that was nowhere near the magnitude of pretending that it had never existed.

Now that she knew, she couldn't imagine going through with something like that. Maybe she never meant to have sex with Frank, maybe she would never have sex with Frank again (maybe it would get better, maybe it would never get better, if it ever happened again, but it had been nothing like her fumbling explorations with Ned, and that had disappointed her immensely), but if this pregnancy did in fact go to term, she could be a single mother.

Even if the prospect scared the hell out of her.

She closed her eyes, taking hard gasping breaths, trying to keep herself from sobbing. This was why, even though she had loved him more than anyone else, she had never let Ned cross that line. If they had, if things had been like this...

She turned onto her belly, tucking her legs up underneath her. She wouldn't be afraid, she thought, her face buried in the pillows, as though her father would be able to hear her if she thought it too loud. She wouldn't be afraid because Ned would be happy, and Ned had wanted to marry her for years, and having sex, God, she had never dreaded the thought of having sex with Ned. The intimacy of their relationship had been natural, and she had known that when she was ready, it would be amazing.

Ned cared. Ned had always cared, about her, about what she needed, what she wanted. 

She squeezed her eyes tight shut and cried. Before things had gone bad, this time, this past time, she had been at the frat, with him, and they'd had too much to drink. It was a good excuse. And, really, maybe, they hadn't had too much to drink, because when he led her up to his room, they didn't sleep, they didn't go to sleep for hours. They'd come so close, as close as she ever let him, and if she'd let him cross the line, she wouldn't be here right now.

She felt sick, heavy, tired. Maybe if she and Ned had done this, instead of she and Frank, maybe that spark would have drowned. God, that night in the frat, he'd touched her until she hadn't been able to think or breathe, just gasp and rock against his touch, that was all she could do. If he'd just taken that next, that last step, hips instead of hands between her thighs, she wouldn't have been able to stop him.

But he was miles and miles away from her and they hadn't. And if Ned knew, if he found out about Frank (and he would; she curled up, fetal, and moaned, but he would find out, he would know), they would never know, they would never finish this long slow dance that had begun the day they had met.

She found the thought incredibly sad.

She'd never expected... not this. She'd expected to go to Ned today, to slide her hand into his and give him that slow grin and tell him that she wanted to try again, and he would have softened and said he'd think about it while they both knew that by the time the night was over, they would be a couple again. And then, in a few days, a few weeks, she would accompany him to another party, and they would drink, and then she would lead him back to his room and when they approached that line again, she would be shy and she would be unsure and she would let him.

That was how it was supposed to be. And maybe tomorrow it would be; maybe Frank would come and say he wasn't ready for the responsibility of having a child, and she would seduce the man she loved into staying with her.

_It's not supposed to be like this,_ she thought, miserable. She rubbed her tears away on the pillowcase and turned onto her side, fully aware that any sleep she did find would be prickly and shallow, and leave her sullen and fazed in the morning. Ned wouldn't want to be her second choice. She'd never been his.

The streetlight through the window hit his picture at just the right angle, turning it to an opaque sheet of pale, obscuring his smile. Nancy had never been superstitious, inclined to believe in anything outside evidence she could feel with her own hands and see with her own eyes. Bess might pore over horoscopes and arrange her dorm room for the most effective Zen, but Nancy knew that no matter how eerie her own connection to Ned might have seemed, it had never been, and it was broken now.

She opened her mouth, to apologize to him over the distance, to give herself some modicum of peace, but instead she said aloud, her voice harsh with tears, "I need a cigarette."

She hadn't really snuck out of the house before. She knew where each stair creaked, though, because knowing that was just smart. She slid into a pair of sweatpants, smirking when she realized that at some point her entire wardrobe would consist only of elastic-waists, and scooped up her entire purse. The house seemed to breathe in the stillness. A police cruiser idled lazily up the block. The Drew home had been on patrol routes since Nancy was a child.

On the back porch Nancy finally let out a breath she'd barely been holding and slumped into her usual rocking chair, her purse slouching on the table. Her second cigarette of the day. She would make a very bad mother, indeed, at this rate.

She flipped open the top and fished one out, cupping her hand over the tip, momentarily blinded when the lighter flared. If he were here, Ned would be telling her that she shouldn't smoke. She took her first drag and looked out over the garden, at the night sky all dimmed at the edges in the orange light of the city.

\--

"You shouldn't smoke."

"You're not real," Nancy replied, tipping her cigarette to gaze at the cherry. "So I don't really have to listen to you."

Ned shrugged and reached over for his own cigarette, snatching her lighter in the process. "I'm not the one who's pregnant," he said, off her surprised glance.

"Are you mad at me about that?"

Ned tossed the lighter back onto the table, exhaling his first drag. His legs were crossed. He looked very much at home. "Wouldn't you be? If you were me?"

"Yeah," Nancy mumbled, hanging her head.

"Maybe I'd be glad if you told me."

"You mean you'd be happy for me?"

Ned chuckled. "Happy for you, that you let Hardy knock you up? No. Maybe I'd be happy because we left things up in the air, and it would be good to know once and for all that you're not an option for me anymore. Let me move on."

"I don't want you to move on."

"Why not? From here, it really looks like you already have."

Nancy pouted. "If I told you, how would you react?"

He shrugged again. "Hurt. Betrayed. I'd be angry at you if you told me the truth now, and I would probably completely lose it if you kept the truth from me any longer than it would take you to pick up the phone, right now."

"So I made the right choice when I called Frank instead."

"You took the path of least resistance," he corrected her, but his voice was mild. "You didn't have the guts to tell me. And you know you don't love Frank, and his rejecting you would have been, will be easier to take, if that's what he does. Telling me? Oh, you might have had to fake things for a while. Lead me on."

"How the hell am I supposed to tell you? Call you up tomorrow, make small talk, and then say that Frank accidentally slipped and fell on me while we were at a stakeout and now I'm two months pregnant?"

"You could drive up to see me," he shrugged. "Like you were planning to do anyway. Maybe get me in bed and when I'm still half-drunk from actually sleeping with you, you could tell me then."

"That'd be even better," Nancy snickered. "I... well, if I actually did, if I do go see you... it would be because I want you to stay my friend even after I tell you what I did, not because I want to sleep with you and then have you knock me on my ass after I tell you that, not only did I cheat on you, but with Frank, and not only did I cheat on you with Frank, but I slept with him. And had the ultimate worst luck in the world, to get pregnant."

"Being friends isn't an option," he told her. "You wouldn't stay friends with me if I got another girl pregnant."

Nancy shrugged. "Touché."

"So... you tell me, I get mad and we're through; you lie to me for a while and I eventually find out, I get mad and we're through. If Frank gets here tomorrow and takes you on a ride to a clinic..."

Nancy shook her head. "He won't do that. And I won't do that if he asks me. As far as I'm concerned, his bringing it up is termination of his parental rights."

"What if I put it to you this way: you get to choose. Do you want a child? Or do you want us to even have a chance at ever being friends again?"

Her cigarette was burning low. Nancy stubbed it out angrily and put the butt on the table to cool before she hid it. "I didn't want to get pregnant."

"So there's your answer. And maybe it won't even be Frank; maybe it'll be," Ned made a flourishing gesture, "these cigarettes, maybe it'll be the next nutjob you run into on a case, maybe it'll be a thousand things, and you won't even have this baby. You don't carry to term; then what?"

"Then I'll have a second chance," she said softly. "Then I can come to you and tell you what's happened and I won't—" She put her hands over her face. "He's going to ask me to marry him."

"What are you going to say?"

"What choice do I have?" Nancy asked, feeling her eyes start to fill again. "If he asks me, I have to say yes. If he offers to give this child a life, I have to say yes to that. You aren't going to be around to offer it, and my father might be generous right now, but he and Hannah didn't sign on to have a grandchild to raise. Doing this alone..."

"That's really the point, isn't it?" Ned flipped the butt of his cigarette into the darkness at the edge of the porch. "You're afraid to do it alone. Which means that when Frank comes here to have this 'talk,'" he made air quotes, "with you, and he says he's going to do the honorable thing, you're going to say yes and try to make a life with a guy who isn't, hasn't, and quite possibly won't be as good as me, in bed."

"It was our first time," she said, flushing. "Everyone's first time sucks."

"You think our first time would have sucked?"

Nancy shrugged. "Not really," she admitted. "But being good in bed isn't everything."

"Oh, I forgot," Ned said sarcastically. "Being an unofficial member of an international spy organization and not caring whether you come make him great husband material."

"It doesn't matter whether he's good husband material," she shot back. "What matters is whether he is husband material. And if he asks, I'm going to say yes."

Ned leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands. "And it'll be as easy for you to say yes to him as it was for you to say no to me."

"Probably," she retorted. "It wasn't easy for me to say no to you."

"Oh come on, Nancy, of course it was. Otherwise I wouldn't have asked you. And can I just point out that all the reasons you gave me back then are probably doubly true now?"

"I'm going to have a baby," she said. "That changes everything."

"So you get pregnant and you don't love me anymore. Simple as that."

Nancy shook her head. "I get pregnant and I realize that, yes, we may fight, yes, sometimes I make incredibly stupid decisions, but I love you. I think I probably always will, regardless of what happens tomorrow or when the baby is born or if the baby is born. And I realize I made a huge, terrible mistake when I slept with him, that it didn't solve anything, and that no matter what I've changed my relationship with you for the rest of our lives. But I can't go back and undo it. Even if I did go to a clinic tomorrow and end this, the fact that I slept with him, will still be true."

He nodded, slowly. "So tell me," he replied. "Call me tomorrow and tell me those things. Better yet, after you've talked to Hardy, drive up to Emerson and see me. At least you owe me that. I deserve that much."

She sighed. "I don't want to hurt you like that."

"You already have," he replied. "Whether I know it or not, you already have. And I might get angry, but you can't deny me that right. Besides, who knows? Maybe six months from now, when Frank has defected to the Russians and you're about to go into labor, I'll forgive you."

"Frank would never defect to the Russians."

"Exactly," he said, and winked. "It will take me a very long time to forgive you. But I can't start until we've talked about it."

Nancy looked down, shook her head. "I can't do it tonight. I'll do it later."

Ned shrugged, then climbed to his feet. "I thought I was your best friend," he said. "I guess our relationship doesn't mean that much to you, if you're afraid of a little yelling that you already know you deserve."

"You mean the world to me," she replied.

"If I meant the world to you then you wouldn't have done this," he said, his back to her. He took two steps down, paused on the last. "Would you."

Her lip started quivering. "I just made a mistake, a stupid mistake. I love you."

"But it's not enough," he sighed, then turned back around to face her. "I love you too. The longer you keep this," he nodded at her stomach, "from me, though... the harder it's going to be for me to ever trust you again. If I ever do."

\--

She was right; she knew she was right. Part of the connection of being his girlfriend for so long. She could predict his behavior, she knew what he was thinking. Sometimes, still, he could broadside her. She was pretty sure this would broadside him.

She looked out over the backyard and the rose bushes, without seeing any of it. Her phone was in her purse, but she couldn't make herself touch it.

_Tomorrow. I'll tell him tomorrow, after I talk to Frank,_ she promised herself, knowing full well that she still wouldn't have the heart or the strength to do it. She relaxed her tense shoulders with effort, hid the cold remains of her cigarette in the trash can, and let herself quietly back into the house.

At the top of the stairs her limbs felt thick and heavy. Late news reports and crappy made-for-television movies were all that was on, and potentially waking her father, potentially inviting further conversation, was out of the question. She sat down on the edge of her bed and slid out of her shoes.

Ned was smiling at her from his picture. She put the picture in the drawer and closed it. He'd be accusing enough later. She needed to sleep. She and the baby needed to sleep.

But, after putting out the light and sliding into bed, from the instant she put her head on the pillow she was no closer to sleeping than she had been before their imagined conversation. The cigarette had just given her something to occupy her hands, the entire time. She didn't feel exhilarated, or relaxed, or much of anything.

She and Ned used to smoke, a lifetime ago. It hadn't lasted long. His coach would have killed him, and her father would have killed her. That had been half the fun.

"You know what I liked best?"

If she imagined hard enough, she could feel him, curled up close behind her, her back to his chest, his breath against her neck. "What did you like best?"

"Lighting it for you. You always looked so sexy."

She smiled. "That was purely intentional and entirely for your benefit."

"And I appreciated it." He kissed the nape of her neck, then whispered into her skin, "If you'd asked, I would have."

"Do you think I asked him?" She closed her eyes, drawing her knees up tighter.

"Maybe not outright," Ned answered, the tiny echo she still held. "But I wouldn't have ignored you for two months after..."

"You did ignore me," she reminded him, mildly.

"Not the same. If we'd started having sex, believe me. You wouldn't have felt neglected."

"You can't know that because I can't know that."

"But it's what you want to believe," he replied, leaving the ghost of warmth on her skin. "I love you. You know that's true."

She shook her head, nestling deeper against her pillow. "It doesn't matter," she mumbled. "Doesn't matter if you love me or if I love you, not until tomorrow, not until I find out what he wants to do."

"You don't even have a relationship with him, not the way you do with me. You don't hear from him for two months, and you actually think this is going to change anything?"

"It will," she said. "He understands who I am. He loves me. And when we're on cases together, we think alike. This won't be horrible."

"It'll be great," he sighed in agreement. "I've told you I love you, how many times? And he told you...?"

"He didn't," she muttered, her eyes pricking with tears.

"So why are you doing this to yourself? If he tells you that he loves you now, you'll always know that this was the only reason why, and you'll wonder. And it'll be a thousand times worse if he doesn't even bother to do that."

She nodded. "What the fuck have I done," she whispered.

"Come to me," Ned whispered against the back of her neck. "Run away tonight, come to me, and maybe we can find a way out of this. You don't have anything left to lose, Nan."

"I have this," she replied. "The ghost of you."

\--

She was almost, finally, nearly asleep when she rolled onto her back, and she felt the memory of a palm against her cheek. When she opened her eyes, she couldn't stop herself.

She was in his bedroom at the fraternity, and everything important was clouded and dimmed by the cosmopolitans Jan had been making in the blender all night. Her shirt and bra were already off, somewhere on the floor between here and the door. The music was loud, even here, but between them was quiet and warm.

He didn't even have to ask, now. He leaned down, her legs wrapped around his waist, and kissed her, one hand trailing down to cup her breast. Her returning kiss was rough, and she giggled when he pulled away, his thumb teasing her nipple as he kissed her neck, finding the spots that made her shiver and sigh under him.

She wrestled her jeans off, first, because that was the way it went, between them. He took care of her panties, glancing at the door to make sure the lock was engaged before he knelt over her, and even in the darkness and the wavering blur of her vision, she could see the sadness in his gaze. He knew that, for all this, she wasn't going to let him cross the line. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not for a long time. Her trust came at that price.

She reached up and pulled him down to her, soothing away his trepidation with kiss after lingering kiss, and soon his jeans were off too, soon he was on top of her and but for the thin cotton of his boxers... She sighed when his mouth found her breast and, taking pity on him, on the unregarded erection straining between her open thighs, she placed her palm flat on his hip and pushed him away. When he obeyed, pulling back, his eyelashes brushing against her flesh in the dark, she nudged his boxers down and slid her cooler hand along his length.

He moaned, shivering into her touch, although this, like everything else, was part of the shifting unbreakable rules Nancy held him under. If he was naked, she was touching him. That way she knew that whatever she was feeling between her thighs, it wasn't him, he wasn't trying to do the things she had explicitly forbid him from doing.

He didn't protest too hard, because he had taught her exactly how to give him a hand job, and by God was she good at it now.

They kissed and she was too close to losing herself. Jan's cosmos and Ned's hands on her, the way his fingers practically worshipped every inch of the skin he caressed, and he didn't press her, didn't demand more. She made a soft, frustrated noise as her closed hand slid up to stroke the base of his erection and its tip slid against her inner thigh.

It couldn't hurt, could it...

The dangerous, forbidden, utterly right thought of it sent a hot tingle down her spine, but then his fingers, which had been teasing her, tracing low on the plane of her belly, finally slid between her open thighs, and his erection jumped against her palm when he found her ready for him. She arched, matching the rhythm of her strokes to the motion of his curious fingertips, and soon they were both panting in the darkness, his every caress urging a low, demanding moan from her.

Back in her lonely bed, at her father's quiet house, she knew how this ended. It ended in chaos and release, she remembered, her face wet with tears she was no longer bothering to brush away, with him collapsed against her, and yet, at the end of it, despite everything, she had still ached for him. It was a cheat, almost everything she wanted, almost everything he could give her.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, at the man she had loved, at the man she would love for the rest of her life, stilled above her, and they didn't say anything, they didn't have to say anything at all. He, with one last deliberate stroke that made her tighten and choke back a low groan, slid his fingers away, cupping her hips. She, meeting and holding his gaze, gently tugged on his erection, and he let her lead him until he was just between her parted thighs. She slid her fingertips up the underside of his hot shaft, then released him.

She was afraid, at first. He pushed her knees back, his fingers still wet, so that he could lay with his chest to hers, his arms around her, and then she closed her eyes, her mouth falling open as he very gently, very slowly, slid where his fingers had touched her a thousand times, filling her, tight and hot. He kissed her, because he was taking this very slow, and she returned his kisses absently, her every nerve centered on what was going on inside her. He found the proof of her virginity and she buried her fingers in his hair, her teeth sinking into his skin, her thighs trembling around his hips, and then he had broken her and she started to cry. There were no more kisses, there was nothing that would soothe this away. Her untouched flesh burned with the pain, the unexpected ache of it.

He thrust for the first time and she arched immediately into it, and she had touched him a thousand times, knew every inch of his length, but when he was inside her she was shocked at how shallow he must be, and how deep it felt to her. He groaned, his mouth against her shoulder, as she put her arms around him and somehow found the strength to bring her legs up. The angle of his hips shifted and she gasped harshly, her nails digging into his back.

He pulled back to regard her, still gently urging and retreating by half-inches between her thighs, and she met his gaze frankly, knowing her cheeks were wet with tears. Then he smiled, and took her into his arms, pulling her up so that he was sitting and she was straddling his waist, her breasts full and heavy, the sensitive tips of her nipples sliding over hs chest.

He kissed her earlobe and they were motionless. "I love you," he whispered, supporting her weight as he doubled his legs under him, giving her the height to mount him. "I'll love you for the rest of my life."

"I love you," she whispered, then gasped as he shifted inside her. Supporting her weight with her hands on his shoulders and her knees on the bed, she took him half an inch deeper inside her and groaned, at the pain and pleasure of it. He urged her gently, his palm against the small of her back, and she slowly found the rhythm they had known earlier, with fingers and mouths.

The tension and desperation, the need for release, built inside her, until the movement of her hips against his was no longer quite as timid, until he caught the tip of one breast in his mouth again and flicked her taut flesh with his tongue. She could no longer control it, and it was instinct now, pushing her past the ache, the pain, until he felt that first clench and let himself go.

She looked down at him, this man, her lover, their flesh tacky and gleaming with sweat, adoration and contentment in his eyes, and realized that, because of this, because of the press of her thighs against his hips, this had not been done to her, she had not been passive in this, not waiting for it to all be over so that she could curl up and sleep by herself. She had wanted this, she had needed this, and he had let her show him, show herself, how much. Her virginity, their virginity, had not been taken. She had given it, willingly.

"I'll always love you," she whispered, when they parted, and the ache inside her was more than the longing it had been, since the first night she had known his touch.

He smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. "You're my only," he replied.

The ghost of her curled up in his arms, naked and breathless, content, while reality opened its eyes and stared up at the ceiling, full of grief and regret, hardwood and hay instead of the softness of a bed, the lonely sound of rain on a tin roof instead of the soft rhythm of his heart.

She had made sure, that night, that what her heart wanted, she could never have.

She did not sleep again. She couldn't. Not even the low pensive sham at rest returned. She listened woodenly as Hannah shuffled down the hallway, preparing breakfast, as her father followed. The scent of coffee and pancakes wafted up the stairs and still she waited, on her side, knowing that when the phone rang her choices were all made and there would be no going back.

"Nancy! Telephone!"

She felt her heart throb once in her chest before she tossed the covers back. He would do the right thing. She knew that, even with Ned's imagined and mocking voice in her ear, telling her that he had only agreed to do this because she'd had the misfortune to carry its proof. But Ned wasn't here, not now.

She put a smile that wouldn't have fooled anyone on her face and picked up the phone.


End file.
